The National @ Corn Exchange, 23 August

As The National take stage for their inaugural Edinburgh show to initial rousing applause, there follows a hushed expectancy that immediately bristles neck hairs. Opening with the delicate Runaway, an ecstatic crowd applauds each added wave of brass and percussion, producing an elegiac call and response between band and audience.

It’s a feeling that doesn’t let up, and the sense that singer Matt Berninger really means it when he states how good it feels to be here after endless festival slots, really shines through. The highlights come thick and fast, each one seemingly eclipsing the last; an exuberant Secret Meeting, an unexpected and stadium-epic Available and an ostensible finale in the ever-effective Fake Empire. An encore of Mr. November sees Berninger heroically climb a speaker stack and break through a ceiling tile for the screaming crescendo.

Yet it’s an unplugged Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks that cements the show, the band happily relinquishing their astonishing sound over to the audience for a fitting send-off. [Darren Carle]